EPISTLES

In an interview with Matt Fradd, Fr. John Perricone—an important intellectual voice in the Catholic Church—shares a powerful personal encounter with Mother Teresa.

He recounts a striking moment when he asked her what the greatest evil she had seen was. Her answer—Communion in the hand—reveals a deep sorrow and reverence for the Blessed Sacrament that many today overlook.

This testimony is significant because it challenges not only secular thinking, but also the attitudes of elites, Church authorities, and more liberal voices within Catholicism. Mother Teresa’s words cut through modern assumptions and call attention to a loss of reverence at the very heart of the Church.

Support Fr. John Perricone’s work—gift yourself or a friend his 2025 book Torches Against the Abyss, published by Os Justi Press here https://amzn.to/491PbGc.

Father John Perricone:

It was around 1987. I had just started teaching at St. John’s University, and a friend of mine said the sisters in the South Bronx were looking for a priest to come and say Mass for them. And I knew they were a very orthodox order, and again, I tried to associate myself with any sprigs of hope.

I was a bit afraid of the South Bronx at the time because it was really—it was named Fort Apache because the crime was so high. But I told the woman to tell Sister Priscilla, who was superior of the convent, that I would say Mass every week, because I had a looser schedule now that I was teaching.

And so there I would go into the South Bronx. Some good sisters would lock my car in a little space so it would not be vandalized or stolen, and I would say Mass for the sisters. What a joy that was.

And on several occasions, St. Mother Teresa was at my Mass.

And then the sisters would serve breakfast to me because they were framed by the old disciplines of the nuns. They would serve me a beautiful breakfast, but they were not permitted to eat breakfast with me—not even Mother Superior. Sister Priscilla was from Great Britain.

But Mother would come in and sit with me, and we’d chat, and I felt so privileged. That happened on two or three occasions, and our conversations were so telling that I could remember once: I said, “Mother, you’ve been in the worst areas and sectors of the world imaginable, and you’ve seen the greatest evils. Tell me, of all the things you’ve seen, what can you tell me is the worst evil you’ve come across?” I suspected she was going to say abortion or euthanasia.

She looked at me without missing a beat, Matt. She said, “Communion in the hand.”

I said, “Mother, truly?” She said, “Absolutely, Father.” She said, “What dishonor to our Blessed Savior.”

And I remember she had told that very same story to a priest in the Archdiocese of New York who was saying Mass with them occasionally. And it had gotten to the ear of the current ordinary of the Archdiocese of New York at the time—I won’t mention his name.

He wrote an article saying, “How dare Mother Teresa take issue with an approved discipline of the Church?” He reproved her in an article because this priest had been disclosing to other priests and other people in his congregations what she had said about Communion.

I came to love her. She was brilliant and warm—engaging. I remember one person who participated in the Holy See’s investigation of her life said, “You know that you are in the presence of a saint when you can’t wait to be with them the next time,” because she was magnetic.

There, with her gnarled hands—she had hands like a truck driver—she did such incredible hard work with all the sisters.

She had asked me what I was doing. I said, “Mother, I’m pursuing my doctorate.” And she said, “Oh, Father, is it going well?”

I said, “Well… the tuition is very high, and my archbishop is not paying for it.”

She said, “Oh, well, Father, we may be able to help you.”

I said, “But you live in absolute poverty here. How could you help me with the high tuition of graduate school?”

And she took leave of me. She said, “May I leave you, Father?” I said, “Yes.”

Afterwards, the superior of the convent, Sister Priscilla, came and said to me, “Father, Mother told me you were having a hard time with your tuition.”

I said, “I am.”

She said, “Well, the Missionaries of Charity will pay your entire tuition.”

And they did. Wow. Because of Mother—St. Mother Teresa—she granted me this favor.

A few months later, she addressed the UN, and she invited me to be present in the General Assembly room. I’ve never said that before. And so, here I was, sitting in the General Assembly as she was addressing the UN (about abortion). It was so impressive, and she was unrelenting about it.

“I know. How did you feel as she was stating these things?”

“I felt like standing up and cheering her, full well recognizing that so many of the priests I knew—and so many at the seminary—would probably hate her for saying this, because to them it was simply a very easy option.”

You have to remember that a Jesuit, Father Robert Drinan, who was elected to the House of Representatives in the mid-’80s, was one of the major proponents of abortion in the House. So this was the mood at the time—that anything went except the traditional doctrine of the Church.

He was not disciplined by the Society of Jesus, yet other priests whom I knew so well—Jesuits like Father Paul Boudreau and Father Vincent Miceli—were being cast aside and hated because they were an embarrassment to the Society.

So you have to understand that that speech not only upset the intelligentsia of the United States and the ruling elites, but certainly also within the Roman Catholic Church.

You had Joseph Bernardin, who was the prince of the American hierarchy for all the time he was in office, who developed what he called the “seamless garment,” where—without saying it—he was trying to devalue the moral importance of being opposed to abortion by saying it was part of a broader garment of pro-life issues.

Very clever, these people, because they would not come out and say, “Oh, you Catholics making a big fuss about abortion—leave it aside.” That would cause too much of a splash, even at that time.

So how did he design his dissent? “I’ll set up a weapon where we talk about many different issues of life.” And how dare they consider capital punishment to rank anywhere in its sinfulness with abortion? But that’s the kind of thing he was doing.

So she caused consternation to many inside the Church as well.

Support Fr. John Perricone’s work—gift yourself or a friend his 2025 book Torches Against the Abyss, published by Os Justi Press here https://amzn.to/491PbGc.